Guess what city is the nation’s second-fastest growing college town?

If you didn’t answer “College Station,” you either don’t live here or you need to resume your 20-year nap alongside Rip Van Winkle.

According to a new study by SpareFoot, College Station is the nation’s second-fastest growing college town with a growth rate of 38.25 percent from 2000 (74,267) to 2010 (93,857).

We should also point out that the study doesn’t take into account that College Station has grown another 5.5 percent since 2010 and is expected to reach the 100,000 mark in the next couple of months.

Raleigh, N.C., home of North Carolina State University, leads the pack with a growth rate of 46.3 percent between the last two census counts. The study excluded major cities like Boston and Seattle since their economies are more diversified than those of traditional college towns.

Here are the 20 fastest growing college towns:

Raleigh, N.C. (North Carolina State)

College Station, Texas (Texas A&M)

Las Cruces, N.M. (New Mexico State)

Gainesville, Fla. (Florida)

San Marcos, Texas (Texas State)

Columbia, Mo. (Missouri)

Fayetteville, Ark. (Arkansas)

Flagstaff, Ariz. (Northern Arizona)

Auburn, Ala. (Auburn)

College Park, Md. (Maryland)

Fort Collins, Colo. (Colorado State)

Pullman, Wash. (Washington State)

Tallahassee, Fla. (Florida State)

Austin, Texas (Texas)

Champaign, Ill. (Illinois)

Chapel Hill, N.C. (North Carolina)

Stillwater, Okla. (Oklahoma State)

Manhattan, Kan. (Kansas State)

Fargo, N. D. (North Dakota State)

Tuscaloosa, Ala. (Alabama)

By the way, did you happen to notice that five of the top nine are SEC towns? Of course you did.

2 responses

It is strange to me that they exclude Seattle which has a smaller population than Austin, but include Austin. I’d like to see this list re-done based on the number of people moving to each of these cities daily. The list would be completely different.